Someone comes to my table at Groovin’ High. Although engulfed by go-go bars, elephant pants shops, massage parlours, and Thai food for tourists, it’s a rather decent place for jazz. He says his name is Pong. I think he might be the fifth Pong I’ve met in Bangkok.
Pong wears a striped long-sleeved shirt, dark smoke jeans, and pink shaded glasses. I’m not sure if they really are pink – is it just the flirtatious lighting of the bar?
I’m reminded of a man I went on two dates with. The poor guy had to wear his prescription sunglasses, without which his life was a huge messy impossibility. Once, on a plane from Berlin en route to Yangon, he went to the bathroom thrice, and the third time he walked down the aisle an old guy spat out, ‘Well you are just a bloody wanker with your sunglasses then, aren’t you?’ It was loud enough for one third of the plane to hear, he said, but it was okay, he’d had worse. He walked on with his head held high.
I want to laugh at the thought of it now, but that might seem absurd to Pong. It’s not like I don’t already despise how unnecessarily smiley I tend to be in this kind of situation. I don’t want to be accosted really, but nonetheless I am always flattered if the guy approaching me is not grotesque-looking.
Pong asks me where I’m from. Trying to appear charmed, I ask him to guess. I’m probably too smiley now.
‘You look,’ he begins, then pauses. His pensive expression resembles those of the ancient philosophers, the white French ones.
Pong frowns and tuts, brewing an answer. I wonder if he’s going to say China, Japan (easy guesses, no one has ever guessed Korean though) or Philippines, Myanmar – I get that from time to time too. In any case, I’m ready to hear his pronouncement and declare him wrong.
Once, after a bland first date, I made a list of questions that are immediate turnoffs. My number one is firmly ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ and ‘Where are you from?’ is a close second . I always say I’m the child of a North Korean defector and a Timorese priest. This usually does the job. It shushes some, perhaps to cover ignorance of both places or lack of interest in exploring the marital codes for priests from Timor Leste. For others, it lights the flame of curiosity. A good filter I’d say.
Pong speaks: ‘You look unique.’
I freeze for a second, my readily ejectable joke gone, my come-back fallen flat. ‘You look very unique,’ he repeats.
His words hit my head with four strikes. YOU. LOOK. VERY. UNIQUE. Bang!
I’m sitting in the corner of the bar, diagonal to the entrance where a retro-looking brass mirror pirouettes. I feel pinched to the infinity of its surface, my face pressing down seamlessly. The mirror that looks into all my creases and curves, spots and scars, searching for utmost honesty. Being unique is my curse and my cure. Who’d expect that in this part of Bangkok on a night like this anyway?
I search my mind for a way to pay back this compliment so enormous that I think I might be tearing up. But before I can come up with anything witty, genuine and, most important of all, which hits the right note, Pong adds, ‘You look so unique and so sexy.’
“Aww, that’s very kind,” I say and smile. Spoilsport!
Spoilsport. Spoilsport. Spoilsport.
Pong ruined it. It would have been perfect had he stopped at, ‘You look unique.’ That’s what I needed. Tonight. In life.
A sudden whine that seems to come from the depths of Pong’s throat smashes my mind-roam. I realise my left hand is holding my right.
‘I wanna dance! Ayyyye, why is nobody dancing?’ He crosses his arms with extra whips, his head falls back. Those hard pouting lips make a vantage point of his face from this angle. If I tilted my head back that far, my nose would not be able to hold up glasses like that.
‘Sorry Pong, I’m not feeling it tonight. I will only be able to dance if I stand long enough to fall to the floor,’ I say.
It’s not entirely untrue. I was recently jolted by a man I’d been with for two years. He said he tried, but really, it just wasn’t as good as his previous relationships. He was nonchalant. I was livid. I still am, when the drinks take me there.
But tonight I cannot be tied down here. I have scheduled a hook-up at 10pm with A who I’ve been sleeping with whenever he’s in Bangkok. We met in Phnom Penh before it became less cool with all the sprouting malls and casinos. Once, lying naked in bed, I noticed that A had extremely soft hands for his age. He told me he was planning to buy a place in Jakarta and move there in the future. ‘But I thought Jakarta was sinking,’ I said. He shrugged, like he still does, in response to so many other things.
To the 21-year-old me, A was cool, giving a ‘fuck you’ to most things in life except his plants. Now that I’ve met many more guys with soft hands in their 40s, I wonder whether A will ever actually move to Jakarta and I wish he trimmed his nostril hair more often.
Pong stands up almost in a bounce. ‘I don’t care. I wanna dance. I’m here to dance.’
As I watch, he walks to the narrow area circled between the stage and tables, carrying himself like a leading actor in a theatre. Clinks of glasses and cheering sounds come from the crowd. The band exchange glances between themselves and with Pong who swings and twists, his shirt hollow on his skittish, skinny body. As his movement intensifies, the trumpet seems suddenly louder too.
I ask myself how many people in the bar Pong might approach with the same line. Would they prefer to be unique, or unique and so sexy?
There are a few model-type girls near the bar. I imagine them standing next to the man who dumped me. Would he court them like a thirsty dog? Well, they are well out of his league and would ditch the shit out of him. What would he do with faces like those in places like these? Would he cross his legs, would he lay his hand over theirs, would he rub the smalls of their backs, would he rest his head on their shoulders? What if Pong approached him? What could he be doing right now?
Pong waltzes back to my table with a further invitation: ‘Coooooome you! Join meeeee!’
He tries to pull me from the couch seat but fails. ‘Pong, let go of me,’ I speak up.
‘This is not fun!’ He stamps his feet on the sticky floor. In the dim light I cannot see the extent to which he might be actually sulking instead of acting.
Pong sits back at my table, palms on both sides of his jaw, still pouting, his brow furrowed. ‘It’s my last day on leave. Tomorrow, I have to take the bus all the way down to Trat and go back to the resort. Five hours and back to that shithole, to stay in the shithole of a dorm with the Khmers and Burmese. Aye! Bummer! I wish the resort blown away and a rich guy would fall in love with me or be my sugar daddy.’
Pong bursts into laughter as if the novelty of these lines has blown his mind. His left hand lays on his belly, seeming to rub the waves of laughter back inside.
Then he turns to me. ‘Are you married?’
I force another smile that almost halves my vision while I shake my head.
Without inquiring further, Pong lets out a sigh and looks down at his shoes, one hand holding the coaster and the bottom of his glass. In what seems like a few minutes, as if having decided he’s done with the scene, he wags his head, stands up, and whirls through watching tables back to the centre of the dancefloor, with visibly more wobbly strides this time.
I need to get out of here.
I fumble for the exact amount of cash for my drink to leave at the bar and rush out, almost running. Once I am standing in the exuberantly bright and bustling street exuding its heavy, meaty scent of the night, I gasp for breath. The woman selling elephant pants seems to give me a half-knowing, half-probing look. An old guy scans my body disapprovingly. Several taxi drivers ask me if I need their services.
I see above myself that my head is becoming an enormous emptiness, exhumed of memories and unsheathed of prospects, hanging on something in the shape of a body. My body.
Pong’s wallet sleeps quietly in my bag.
I stop a motorbike driver and hop onto the bike to escape the scene. The still baking air howls around us as we zip through the clusters of frenzy of Sala Daeng.
My hair whips my neck like a tyrant, each string meticulously coated with the uncombable elusiveness of substances the tropical wind endlessly swallows. My dress floats with the wind as well as with the irredeemable prospects of the night. Of nights at Groovin’ High, in Saladaeng. I think I will take a sleeping pill tonight. At times like this, it’s probably better to float a little over reality.
Peixuan Xie is a humanitarian worker who mostly researches on gender and conflict and occasionally writes stories.
Story illustration via Unsplash.